The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 222: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

924 been used as a chart in a school of osteopathy. Also the locomotive engineer, who had a month’s vacation and was look- ing around to find a place to light when the final jumping-off time came to him in his trade. : They were messing together in a hired tent—the ladies’ part of it cur- tained off with twenty-ounce canvas. It was cheaper than indiscriminate chuck- hunting in Comanche, and immeasura- bly more satisfactory. For Jennie’s mother was an amazing cook. Her husband had just sat around and eaten himself into the grave—he had liked her cooking so well. That was about all he cared for. It took up so much of his thought and energy that he hadn’t time to look for a job. She never tired of recounting the pathetic incident of his end, which was induced, if not aggravated in its inten- sity and hastened in its culmination, by a famous carrot pudding. He never got enough of that dish but once. And that once, poor soul, was fatal to his future ambitions. He went to his rest full of carrot pudding, satis- faction on his face. Mrs. Tree had been a woman of means in her time. But feeding a hus- band who was a full-hand on consump- tion and a very low power on produc- tion had made a hole in the box. The means wouldn't last always, even though they had stretched out far enough to put Jennie through Molly Bawn College—that seat of learning fa- mous around the globe for its fudge. Now, Jennie had an idea that she might replenish the means and pay in- terest on her education by going to Wyoming and marrying a romantic rancher—one of the sort that comes in with alkali dust on his shoulders in the _ dramas of Western life. That scheme looked sensible to Mrs. Tree. Meantime she might just as well register and draw Claim No. 1, and then sell her relinquishment for a few thou- sand of easy money. So that was the plan all around. THE ARGOSY., The sergeant had brought that brick of limburger cheese with him in his valise, with a bag of onions and some rye bread. The sergeant was a plain man who did not waste his money on dining-car waiters. He provisioned himself for all such expeditions as that. And that was the explanation of the limburger’s presence in Comanche, which town had not yet risen to the altitudes of culture at which limburger moves to advantage on the market. When the sergeant unpacked his valise on the third day in camp he re- moved the limburger, such as there was left of it after his depredations along the journey from Omaha. It asserted its presence in the tent with a silence which was louder than words. The sergeant, in defense of his ration, contended that it would be all right after it had been given a chance to air. The others insisted that it never would be all right, because it never had been all right, and that cheese of that stamp and character never was all right, no matter under what favorable condi- tions it was confined. . Reluctantly the sergeant admitted that it might have spoiled. So he cast it upon the rubbish heap, and there it came under the eye of Big Buffalo, once a mighty chief in the councils: of his people. ‘ And that was the way Jennie came to get the old gentleman’s picture in her little camera, which had the crack in its upper right-hand corner closed with chewing gum. It gave Jennie a great deal of satisfaction, for she looked back on her narrow escape with many thrills. One Horse came around that after- noon. One Horse was an Arapahoe, and Big Buffalo was a patriarch of that same unfastidious tribe. The adven- turers had made the acquaintance of One Horse shortly after their arrival, attracted by the bright feather which he wore tied into his back hair by a piece of colored twine. Taciturnity of disposition, paucity of words may be common of the red In- dian in his native wilds and unadorned Gomichbooks COF